Tag Archive: Tarzan

Image Comics is giving the celebrated Eisner and Harvey Award-winning series Battlepug a giant hardcover collected edition this month. Written and illustrated by Mike Norton, Battlepug: The Compugdium collects all five volumes of the brilliant webcomic. A series of humor-filled fantasy/adventure tales with the look and vibe of One Thousand and One Nights/Arabian Nights, Tarzan,Conan the Barbarian,Godzilla, and Ray Harryhausen movies, Battlepug is epic and unique. Following stories told of the last Kinmundian as he rides his giant pug into the next town and next battle, Battlepug represents the best of the comic book and fantasy worlds.

With 336 pages in all with big 8.5 x 12 inch layouts, this is a book you’re going to keep returning to, fun for all ages. Battlepug: The Compugdiumincludes Blood and Drool (the dreaded harp seal and Witch Toad!), The Savage Bone (meet Gil and some underwater types), Sit. Stay. Die! (a skull monkey and a host of giant underground beasts await), The Devil’s Biscuit (encounter a giant turtle spirit!), and The Paws of War (face the giant koala!).

Fans who have already gobbled down the five stories will still want to take a look at the Compugdium, as it includes plenty of great additional content: a gallery of 36 pages of Battlepug art from various artists, 15 pages of sketches, including some Norton layouts and early character images, plus cover art prints from the series.

Sometimes you ask for something and it magically appears. Like the new Dark Horse Comics’ graphic novel Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Once and Future Tarzan. I originally reviewed a one-shot initial version of this story here at borg way back in 2012. I liked the retro adventure vibe and thought that it begged for an expanded story. At last writer Alan Gordon has taken Tarzan into the distant future in a full 15-part epic, as a 300-year-old survivalist who encounters a future world right out of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, Nolan and Johnson’s Logan’s Run, or Richard Matheson’s I am Legend. Tarzan and Jane join a tribe of warrior women on their quest–Tarzan is a well-educated leader who communes with the animal kingdom, and Jane brings her own special skill set to this adventure.

Readers will find a densely written graphic novel with many literary references and a thoroughly researched, thoroughly faithful look at Burroughs’ Tarzan, with the building of a great expansion world for the character, loyal to the spirit of the original stories. It’s a mix of fantasy and James Bond action, as the Tarzan of the past confronts a future world reeling from decades of mishandling. Tarzan has been secretly protecting animals, species other humans failed to protect, and Tarzan brings them into this future. It’s a story of the past catching up with mankind, and a glimmer of hope via the legend of Tarzan. Can the future still be saved for all of life on Earth, before nothing is left of the natural world? Gordon’s story suggests the possibility and the story itself serves as its own sci-fi warning to take care of what we have before it’s gone. The story isn’t dark and daunting, but it has that fantasy adventure tone of the age of serial adventures, peppered with humorous dialogue, too (some of the callbacks to Tarzan’s past are particularly funny).

The imagery of artists Thomas Yeates(Prince Valiant, Conan) and Bo Hampton(Viking Glory, Batman) is gorgeous, and it wouldn’t succeed so well without the complimentary color palette used by colorists Steve Oliff and Lori Almeida. It has the nostalgic look of Illustrated Classics, but with more movement and action, something that will appeal to fans of Matt Kindt’s Dept.H and Black Badge, Phil Noto’s retro styled art, P. Craig Russell’s adaptation of Wagner’s The Ring, and the imagery of The Hobbit artist David Wenzel. Parts feel like a voyage of Captain Nemo, Captain Blood, Conan the Barbarian, or Red Sonja. All of these fantasies share the common quest, the world outside of a present day reality, stocked with nicely fleshed-out legend and lore.

We’ve been raving about the three and three-quarters inch scale Kenner-style action figures from Funko’s ReAction line here at borg.com for a few years now. If style and nostalgia are your jam but not necessarily screen-accurate sculpts, it’s hard to beat the myriad of licenses that Funko has secured. What you may not have seen is that Figures Toy Company has been producing a similar series of figures reflecting the larger, eight-inch Mego action figure line also popular in the 1970s.

Your editor with the original Mego Robin figure, and at right the new Figures Toy Company version.

The toy company has also stepped ahead into more recent licenses, creating a line of Mego-style Harry Potter action figures. Some of Figures Toy Company’s action figure lines are also offered in a 12-inch and 18-inch version. Many lines were released in limited editions and exclusives, and some can only be found on Amazon and eBay, and many are still available with new figures released frequently. Not only do many have the Mego-style retro packaging, others have the Kresge Stores-style packages your parents could pick up in the 1970s as point-of-sale purchases at checkout in local dime stores across the country.

Is this the era of camaraderie among comic book publishers? Last year it seemed publishers including IDW Publishing, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Dynamite Comics were able to structure an unprecedented number of crossovers or mash-ups. At Emerald City Comicon this weekend Dark Horse Comics and BOOM! Studios announced the latest and perhaps greatest mash-up coming our way in 2016: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes meets the characters created by Pierre Boulle in The Planet of the Apes in the new series Tarzan on the Planet of the Apes.

You also have the latest high-concept genre mash-up with The Planet of the Apes franchise bringing the science fiction component and Tarzan bringing the fantasy component to the story. Tim Seeley (Revival) and David Walker (Power Man and Iron Fist) will serve as story writers on the five-issue miniseries. Fernando Dagnino (Suicide Squad) is interior artist with Duncan Fegredo cover art.

Note that this is not another “versus” story. It’s actually a team-up. In this new version of Tarzan, Tarzan and Ape Caesar were raised as brothers. They are separated by slave traders, but are reunited when Apes battle Man, taking the battleground from the jungles of Africa to “the center of the Earth,” according to the announcement for the series.

Dozens of adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan have made it to the big screen and TV, and the newest version is out next year. It’s not another Disney adaptation although the 1999 Disney version was pretty good. This new version offers some nice animation in its first international full-length trailer. It includes some futuristic concept updates to the original story, as seen in the trailer. And it includes the voice of one of those actresses we can’t get enough of–Jamie Ray Newman.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan has had many incarnations in the past 100 years, so it’s probably time that he is thrust into the far future as a 300-year-old human who, along with wife Jane, encounters a future world you might find in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, Nolan and Johnson’s Logan’s Run, or Richard Matheson’s I am Legend in the new one-shot comic book The Once and Future Tarzan. Tarzan faces strange creatures big and small, and a tribe of women who speak in a future French dialect, who he assists on their quest. Tarzan is a well-educated survivalist who communes with the animal kingdom–the main element that ties this future Tarzan to the Tarzan of our past.